The West Wing: on a quest to achieve the SDGs

The West Wing is probably best known as a synonym for the offices of the US President and his staff in the White House. In the Netherlands the name was originally used to refer to policy advice regarding the Western Hemisphere given to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by youngsters. Nowadays the initiative covers the entire world. It is intended to promote interaction between the civil service and young people. For the latter it is an opportunity to gain insight into international policy making while the civil servants benefit from fresh, innovative ideas.

Ending up at The West Wing

 “I have always been interested in geopolitics,” says Joppe when we first speak in January. “Studying Chinese Public Policy and Chinese Traditional Identity at a summer school in Beijing and spending a semester at the Singapore Management University were great opportunities to complement the quantitative orientation of my studies in Rotterdam. The West Wing appealed to me because it offered a chance to deepen my knowledge and put my Asian experience to good use. Each year the Ministry of Foreign Affairs identifies four policy areas, called tracks, that applicants can sign up for. They are all very interesting, but I focused on the one where I felt I could add most value. After attending an information session, I applied to work on aligning Dutch trade policy for Indonesia with the SDGs. I was invited to come to a selection day where we were asked to solve cases. In the end the ministry chose twelve people to work on this topic. A thirteenth person was appointed as track leader, in charge of communications with the ministry and managing the process. The other twelve were all writers. In addition, everybody had a more specific task. My role, was to provide unsolicited advice together with three others. One of the things we did was to describe a future in which responsible entrepreneurship and transparent supply chains are the norm. This was partly inspired by the example of Tony Chocolonely, a company that aims to take into account the true price of its products.”

If we look at the ranking of how individual countries are preparing to reach the SDGs, it is obvious that the Netherlands can do better. We are currently 146th on the Sustainable Development Indicator. Although we score well on things like Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, we are doing relatively poorly on goals such as Climate Action, Life Below Water and Life on Land. No wonder, the ministry came up with a track to research how we can make sure that Dutch trade policy furthers the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals formulated by the United Nations, while ensuring that Dutch companies can thrive as well. 

“Initially, the briefing seemed almost contradictory,” remembers Joppe. “We spent the first three months doing desk research and exchanging ideas in brainstorm sessions with the team. Due to Corona regulations this was all done online and at first it was quite difficult to get a flow going in such a large group of people who had never met each other. The flip side was that we could attend events and speak to people that would normally not have been accessible to us. From January onwards we started talking to third parties. We were part of the Dutch trade mission to Indonesia, joined round table discussions and were able to make contact with companies that had expressed an interest in the country by joining this mission.

Expectation management

We also faced the challenge of stakeholder management: there seemed to be diverging expectations of what the team would deliver. On the one hand the staff at the International Enterprise Department in The Hague appeared more interested in recommendations that will provide input for future strategy development. On the other hand the embassy in Jakarta is always looking for practical ideas to help companies on the ground. I was pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm with which our final report was greeted. We have managed to come up with a mixture of proposals that give strategic direction, such as the idea to compensate for costs related to sustainability, as well as something very practical like a (digital) guidebook. The government, in the form of the Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland, (Netherlands Enterprise Agency) is already providing important support, but some companies, especially SMEs, don’t always know how to access the help that is available. To address this specific problem, we also suggested a comparison tool to offer more clarity and transparency. More information can be found in our report.”

The six recommendations are:

“We found that there are a few companies that operate in the vanguard of aligning sustainable development with business interests, such as CO2 Operate whose core business is sustainability as the name suggests and Verstegen Spices & Sauces, a company that has been developing a sustainable supply chain and emphasises fair relationships with farmers in Indonesia. These frontrunners aim to share what they have learned with others who aspire to become active in Indonesia. Without previous experience, it may be difficult to understand the opportunities and constraints posed by the local situation. We were fortunate that one of our team members was studying for a Research Master Asian Studies and had lived in Indonesia for a while. With his background he understood the local complexity that Dutch companies in Indonesia face, which helped to provide context in our report. 

Conclusion

It was not difficult for us to reach consensus about our recommendations. The stories we heard from the companies painted a very clear picture. It is easy for a country like the Netherlands to choose the moral high ground. We have been able to build our wealth in a way that did not shun pollution and other practices that are considered undesirable today. However, countries in a less advantageous position are understandably tempted to choose the cheapest options, which may not always be sustainable. Countries such as ours should support them where possible to make a different choice. While many people will agree, the main challenge was to align this with Dutch business interests instead of only promoting sustainability. Our conclusion is that sustainability and profitability go hand in hand and can actually reinforce each other. Although we have used common sense, there was no detailed focus on numbers. It may be strange coming from an economist, but we did not consider it our job to take into account the financial implications. Whereas civil servants have to work within a budget, we were asked to think out of the box so we did not want to constrain our thought process too much.

For me this was a great opportunity to be able to speak with people that I would probably not meet otherwise. We had an online meeting with the EU ambassador to Indonesia and also spoke with Michel Maas, a former journalist working for the Clingendael think tank, who was able to give us fascinating insights from his posting in Indonesia. If it were not for The West Wing, I might never have had the chance to meet these people. This is knowledge you cannot acquire by reading books. I will definitely try to remain in touch with what is happening in this part of the world, but I have learned that for my work I would like to focus on other areas now. I have been working as an intern in the field of quantitative economic research at Rabobank and enjoy coming up with potential solutions to ensure the models we develop are reliable despite the profound changes the economy has been experiencing recently. I will resume my studies in the fall when I start an Msc Statistics at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zürich. This will allow me to indulge my love for numbers and find out what it is like to live abroad independently for a longer period.